How to Clone a Mac Hard Drive? – [Easy Guide]

If your Mac device gets broken, stolen, or lost, you might lose access to all the data stored in it. Normally, we do a backup using Apple Time Machine or send out important data to a cloud service. Cloning the hard drive of your Mac prevents data loss even if your Mac fails. The process to clone a Mac hard drive means creating a perfect one-to-one copy of it as same as the original.

When you upgrade your Mac computer with a new SSD, it is considered good to clone its hard drive to the SSD. Solid-state drives are quite faster than traditional ones, so it speeds up your computer’s overall performance. They’re also more reliable and energy-efficient, which can extend the life of your battery. With so many advantages of cloning, you must know that it upgrades your computer without starting from scratch. Here, in this article, we will help you to know how to clone a Mac hard drive on a Mac device.

What Does Mac Hard Drive Cloning Actually Mean?

Cloning a Mac hard drive means creating a perfect, bit-by-bit, duplicate of it. It includes the data by which you boot your system right from that copy. We can say that the cloned hard drive is of course an exact copy of the original. It contains the Operating system and all the files required to boot up and run your system. 

It is important to note that cloning a drive and backing up your files are different processes. They are different in the following respective:

• Backing Up Copy Only Your Files: When you back up to the cloud or an external hard drive, it will create duplicates of your files. Backup just copies your files and cannot function as an independent drive on its own. You can perform backups using Time Machine on your Mac. 
• Cloning Copies Everything: Every time when you clone any hard drive, it copies everything exactly the same as its original. When you put a cloned drive into the computer, you can start it up and use it normally.

Why It Is Important to Clone a Mac Hard Drive?

Creating an extra copy of your hard drive is a good idea to protect your data and files. In general, many Mac users prefer to clone their hard drives because of the following reasons:

• Upgrading your drive: There are several reasons why moving to an SSD instead of an HDD is a good idea. It especially boosts the performance of your computer. When you switch from an HDD to an SSD, cloning allows you to move all your data over to the new drive.
• Migrating to a new drive: Switching to a new computer? It is important to clone your old drive. It prevents you from reinstalling everything on the new machine. After cloning your old device, you can remove your original drive and mount it in an external enclosure as a backup. After that, properly dispose of your old device!
• Creating a full backup: A backup can help you to restore your important data in case of data loss or malware infection. There are many types of malware that can damage your files, data, or even the entire OS. If you already have a cloned hard drive before your device gets infected, you can clean your system and start from scratch using the clone. 

How do I Clone Your Mac Hard Drive?

Before you start cloning your Mac, it is important to remove all the useless files, if any. If you have mistakenly removed any file you may need in the future, apply methods for data recovery on Mac to get them back. 

Now, go through the following steps to clone a Mac hard drive, using a built-in tool, known as Disk Utility:

Step 01: Format your external hard drive

Formatting your hard drive will erase all the contents stored in it and make it compatible with your Mac. Before you proceed, make sure you copy all the files stored on the drive.

1. Launch Disk Utility using Spotlight Search, i.e., a magnifying glass icon located in the upper left corner.
2. Choose your hard drive in the menu, and then click on the “Erase” button in the upper menu.
3. Now, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the Format drop-down menu.
4. At last, click on Erase.

Step 02: Download and install SuperDuper! 

SuperDuper! is an advanced and easy-to-use disk copying program that you can use to copy or clone all your data from one machine to another. This program allows you to completely create bootable backups of your files and volumes.

Step 3: Select the drive that you need to copy from and a drive you have to copy to. Also, choose Backup – all files, if you have to create a bootable copy of all the stored content.

Step 4: Go to Options for more settings: 

For example, if you are copying your drive for the first time, use the first, default Erase Backup option. Then, copy files from Macintosh HD. For further backups, select one of the three other options appearing on the screen as per your preferences.

Step 5: At last, return to the main screen and click the “Copy Now” button to make a backup. Again, go to the main screen and open “Schedule” to set up regular backups.

How to Restore Deleted Files From a Mac External Hard Drive?

Now that you know how to clone a Mac hard drive, you also need to understand how to recover any data lost while cloning. There are several Mac data recovery software programs that you can use to recover deleted files on your macOS device. Many users found Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac is the best recovery tool that you can use to recover the Mac hard drive. 

It is an all-in-one professional data recovery program that offers fast & secure recovery of data from multiple Mac devices & storage drives. The software scans and previews your deleted or lost files for free. It allows you to recover data from crashed Mac devices, including macOS Catalina, Mojave, and many more. It is very easy to recover files from all types of HDDs, SSDs, and other storage devices. 

How Long Does it Take to Clone a Mac Hard Drive?

The whole time it requires to clone a hard drive depends on several factors, like your cloning speed and data size. For example, if the cloning speed is around 100 Mb/s, it will take about 90 minutes to clone a drive with 500 GB of data. However, if the speed reduces to 50 Mb/s, it will take nearly three hours to clone the same hard drive. 

A faster cloning speed will boost the whole process, but larger volumes of data will increase the duration. If both your source and destination drive are connected to the same device, the cloning process gets completed quickly. Many drives transfer data below their advertised speed. If you have a huge number of files, you need to wait for a long. 

Conclusion

Hope, the above-mentioned information helps you to know how to clone a Mac hard drive. Cloning helps you to keep your Mac hard drive as it is even if it gets corrupted or formatted. Before you clone your hard drive, create a reliable backup of your system. It can help you in case of data loss if occur during the cloning process. Even Mac data recovery software like Stellar data recovery professional for Mac can help you in such a situation.